Perspectives: Speaking of Memory; October/November 2008; Scientific American Mind; by Steve Ayan; 2 Page(s)

Over the past 50 years Nobel laureate Eric R. Kandel has shaped our understanding of the basic mechanisms of memory through his studies of the primitive sea slug Aplysia [see ¿Eric Kandel: From Mind to Brain and Back Again,¿ by David Dobbs, Scientific American Mind; October/November 2007]. First a student of history and literature and later a psychiatrist, the Vienna-born Columbia University professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator has emerged as one of the most prominent brain researchers of the century.

Scientific American Mind: Do you see the humanities and natural sciences as separate realms, or can they be unified?